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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29926419">Becoming a Fan</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourlibrarian/pseuds/yourlibrarian'>yourlibrarian</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fandom - Fandom, Supernatural</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Episode: s02e14 Born Under a Bad Sign, M/M, Meta, Nonfiction</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 21:42:39</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,302</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29926419</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourlibrarian/pseuds/yourlibrarian</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>I started musing about how fannish engagement starts. A while back I posted about what <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/6688144">makes me fannish</a> in general. I find that while it's true, it’s incomplete.  Some thoughts about what I stick around for and the role of other fans in luring me in.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>March Meta Matters Challenge</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Becoming a Fan</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Originally posted April 20, 2007</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>I started musing about how fannish engagement starts.  A while back I posted about what makes me fannish in general.  I find that while it's true, it’s incomplete.  </p><p>Back when “Supernatural” started it was a busy fall schedule of new shows.  I had been used to watching shows live, though that basically meant Buffy, Angel and the Daily Show.  I just wasn’t watching much TV.  The fall after Angel ended was different though.  In part this was because it left such a huge gap, but also because Whedonverse people were spreading out into different projects so we were trying out a variety of shows (RIP Wonderfalls).  Then there were others like Veronica Mars that seemed to be shows that would have a similar appeal. We started taping all these shows so we could go through them faster but also because my SO generally works at night, so watching stuff when we were together made more sense for us. That also made my commitment to a show different.  Before I’d know if I really liked a show because I couldn’t wait to see it and would make time to watch.  And although a few episodes in I was pretty hooked on Veronica Mars, we’d still wait to see it as it came up on our recording queue.  </p><p>Fall 2005 was worse.  There were not only our returning shows but a whole bunch of new Whedon-link shows like Bones, more scifi shows like Invasion, Medium and BSG, and shows that simply had good critical reviews like Everybody Hates Chris and Commander in Chief.  We didn’t bother giving shows more than three episodes to catch on anymore.  Cross scheduling was such a problem (Kitchen Confidential and How I Met Your Mother, was that deliberate?) that even getting onto the recording schedule meant a show had to seem interesting right away.</p><p>Frankly? SPN didn’t make it.  We were taping Commander in Chief opposite it so I decided to tune in to a bit and see what I thought.  Only I’d forgotten until it was almost over and saw the last quarter hour.  It seemed kind of interesting and I later tuned in for the first part of another episode but it didn’t grab me at all.  And when CiC fell off the programming schedule, we started taping Earl and The Office instead.  (I’d also seen 2 episodes of House but while I thought he was a great character, the lack of medical reality on that show drove me up a wall.  Give me a supernatural setting and I’ll forgive a lot but don’t give me a U.S. medical drama that has nothing to do with how medicine is practiced in this country.  Besides, I’ve never been into that genre.)    </p><p>So then this past fall rolls around.  We give up on Lost halfway through the season (we watch long enough to see Nathan Fillion and that’s it).  The excitement that watching Veronica used to bring had started dropping in S2.  Other shows either got cancelled or we lost interest.  Some shows like Friday Night Lights I never tried despite the great reviews because I don’t want to watch anything that reminds me of growing up in the South.  What’s more we’ve started watching TV series on DVD over the summer and are even less patient to watch a show that doesn’t catch us quickly because we’re alternating stuff we’re taping with stuff on disc.  We have to wait to get BSG on tape from family members with access to SciFi, so when we do get it we tend to mainline it.  We love Heroes and 30 Rock, we finally start watching Scrubs, and I’ve pretty much forgotten about SPN which is again inconveniently cross scheduled.</p><p>I’ve almost always watched stuff based on reviews.  I’ve never understood where people are coming from when they say they don’t pay attention to reviews because I rarely watch (or read) anything without them.  To me, word-of-mouth is also a review (if generally a less coherent one) but critics watch a lot of TV, have a lot to compare things to, often know a lot about a show’s pedigree and are writing for a wide audience.  I started watching Buffy because it had great critical reviews.  I have yet to read a critic who didn’t like the show (though there have to be some).  It grabbed me in the very first episode.  So did Angel.  Even if they hadn’t, I would have given them at least 4 or 5 tries to get me on board (that was back in 1999).  That’s also why I started to watch the Daily Show.  The two key words I gravitate to are “smart” and “funny.”  I would watch just about anything that was described with those two words. SPN? Was never described by anyone as smart or funny.  In fact SPN was hardly ever mentioned in reviews at all.  </p><p>This is where fandom comes in.  I was asked yesterday if the fact that so many Buffyverse fans moved into SPN affected my interest in the show.  And really it didn’t, because people are fans of a show for many reasons and so sometimes their tastes will overlap with yours and sometimes they won’t.  One thing I knew was that SPN was a huge draw for slashers. And I read more slash than not, though I think that’s because my favorite type of fic is Spike/Xander.  But I enjoy het and gen as well and read both, so a marginal show whose only appeal is potentially slashable leads isn’t enough to make me tune in.  What did make a difference was the fact that people’s posts about SPN kept reminding me of it, whereas otherwise it would just be another vague name on a TV schedule.  </p><p>What also made a difference was blind luck.  With a full viewing schedule I never remembered to tune in again.  But I was traveling a few months ago, and too tired once I reached the hotel to want to get online.  So I decided to flip on the news and I ended up stumbling across SPN instead.  It was halfway through an episode but I thought I’d give it another shot.  And within a few minutes I was almost laughing out loud at the emotional porniness of it all.</p><p> Femmenerd touched on it in  <a href="http://femmenerd.livejournal.com/93934.html">her meta on SPN</a>. <i> With Supernatural we have pretty men. Check. Lots of phallic symbols: guns, the car, Sam's hands. Check. An adventure/buddy narrative. Check. Strong emotional bonds between men that they have difficulty expressing. Man-tears. Daddy issues. Snark. Cock rock. Hypermasculinity. The list goes on.</i></p><p>I think she’s dead on in saying that the fundamental beginnings of slash came from emotional excess framed by a very masculine environment.  Or I may be putting words in her mouth, but that’s what I’m saying anyway.  For example if you go back to Classic Trek (even more than MUNCLE, which was also slash’s start but I never saw it, so let me use Trek) it was a scifi setting -- technological, male dominated, focused on “issues”, at least overtly.  But you had a lead who over-emoted like crazy, you had a breakout character who under-emoted, and you had frequent peril and do or die situations.  Devotion was something frequently represented, but it was done in a certain sort of masculine framework.  I’d call it the “we don’t leave one of our unit behind” excuse (the Federation, whatever its protestations, was fairly militaristic).  </p><p>Well, SPN takes that classic framework and ratchets it up by several degrees.  These guys aren’t just brothers-in-arms, they’re <i>actual</i>  brothers (add in a dose of taboo).  They’ve got <i>history</i> (see Angel and Spike).  They’re both buddies AND antagonists.  They’re outsiders (a drinking game could focus on the words “freak” and “normal”) who have a constant push-pull about fitting in with society embodied in the two leads.  They’re full of secrets (there’s your closet metaphor) first with outsiders and later even with people who would otherwise understand their lifestyle.  They live in a world of violence and uncertainty that is centered only in their mobility (completely antifeminine).  And as femmenerd pointed out, there’s fetishization of masculine interests (including, I’d add, women).  </p><p>In each episode, though, there is at least a nugget of the chewy caramel center that is their family issues and the emotional suffering that each has experienced and is still going through.  Fandom seems to love nothing more than men in pain. Hurt/Comfort as a fundamental element of slash came about in Trek too (not that it isn’t present in het but I think these days it has less cultural baggage in slash and is thus more openly reveled in).  And there’s physical pain in SPN but also enough of the emotional form that I think there’s tears in every other episode.  </p><p>The particular episode I caught that night was “Born Under a Bad Sign.”  For those who don’t watch SPN, let’s just say that there is so much angst and desperate talk between the brothers that I’ve read fanfic that’s more restrained (and with all the talk lately about how one defines fanfic, I’ve yet to see someone point out that over-the-top emotionalism is a central element for a lot of it).  Just like physical porn it’s either the sort of thing you can’t look away from or it just squicks you completely. [And just to digress, one of my favorite moments from “Mad About You” was when the couple was watching a porn tape with quizzical looks, then suddenly got it and went “Oh! Oh, good for them!”].  I’ve read people define slash as being emotional porn (het is just the same) but I’d say that doesn’t just come from the focus on a character’s emotional life but on the way that emotions are plumbed in such a shameless, hard-core way.  There is no coyness in revealing the emotion, no demure semi-transparent coverings.  It’s all out there on display.  It’s the whole point of the exercise.  That’s why plot is often a very secondary thing in fanfic and what plot does exist follows a lot of standard conventions that you see in one fandom after another.  Because it’s all about the money shot.</p><p>Last week an article came up on my start page about who suffers more in a breakup, men or women. The writer (a columnist for Men's Health) said it was men, as after a breakup women have more catharsis, talk it out with their friends, and eventually move on. Men, he suggested, try to pretend everything's fine and generally launch themselves into dating as soon as possible. Trouble is, months later they will find the same problems they always had in a relationship and yet have difficulty establlishing the same level of comfort in a new relationship. Which ends up in drunk dialing, attempts to renew the old relationship (and possibly stalking).</p><p>Whatever one thinks of his POV, what I found kind of fascinating was the number of comments from women who found this heartening because one of the things that made breakups harder on them was the fact that the guy seemed to be unfazed by it. They felt they were suffering alone. So I do think that fanfic expresses the desire to believe men can empathize, but even more.  the constant efforts to make them suffer in fic are also an attempt to humanize a gender that seems remote and uncaring about most things women value. I think men's general indifference (real or not) makes women angry, and fic seems to be forcing them to feel. Because I've read fanfic with a lot of emotions -- anger, fear, joy, sadness, etc. But I've yet to see one where one or more characters are indifferent.</p><p>I've seen essays around that talk about how some people are fans of a character and some are fans of a ship (and of course, many are also simply fans of a show as a whole but I suspect most of those fans aren't likely to write fic). And I think writers who are fascinated by a character simply like to take them apart to see what makes them tick because they are deeply interested in why people do the things they do. When they happen to like a character, that interest can become an obsession (perhaps because, being fictional, this seems more like an interesting challenge than an invasion of privacy!)</p><p>In BUaBS the entire episode was also about the money shot (there was even an actual shot).  It was abundantly clear to me what the fandom was latching onto, and now that I saw the hook I went looking at how the fandom was employing it.  Let’s just say I managed to find some good fic right away and <i>whoosh</i>.  And I think that femmenerd is also right about how few “first-time fans” are probably in the fandom because boy, do they strike me as organized.  They have a terrific  newbie guide and their newsletter seems to overflow with fan production.  I still don't think I'd describe SPN as smart or funny (though it can be both) but now that I have the first season backstory down I realize what a lot of interesting stuff is involved with the lead characters and how those bits can be assembled into a more compelling whole.  I don't know that the show as a whole can be as engrossing as the Buffyverse, not only because of the often clunky writing but because the two main characters are all there is really.  It's hard to engage that much with other characters who are there largely to move along the main story between the two, something which was never the case with the Whedon characters who were by comparison much more autonomous and fully formed.</p>
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